Monsieur Mediocre

Introduction     

Like many Parisian families, we occasionally rent our apartment out on Airbnb. It s not an easy process, but it is practical, and as long as you can power through the tedious chore of prepping your house and fielding calls from guests who forgot the code to your building, it does provide some disposable income that s handy for all those school year vacations that pop up in France like measles every six weeks.

What many Parisian families DO NOT do is rent out their apartment while they re not on vacation and when their kids are still in school, which is exactly what we did one year by accident, forgetting that the Easter break for families in the south of France hits a week earlier than that in Paris. We realized this fun fact days before our guests arrived, which sent us scrambling to find alternative lodging (on Airbnb of course) in Montmartre, a hop skip and another hop away from our own place in the Tenth Arrondissement.

Sure, it felt odd to pack up our clothes, the printer, plus the dog and cat, hair dryers and book bags, just to hoof it three metro stops west for a week. And yes, it was a bit bizarre to pass your own apartment in the morning on your way to school (now a twenty minute schlep) and see the window of your bathroom fogged up from a stranger probably fucking in your shower.

But in the end, the week turned out not half bad. It forced my family to break up a rut we didn t know we were in, and gave us the chance to see a part of Paris we hadn t had time to visit much. And it was during this impromptu staycation in Montmartre, dining out early with the kids at restaurants or ducking into a café for a beer midday or riding the bus (the bus?) and taking photos from the window of that bus, that I felt, for the first time in fifteen years, like an American in Paris. A tad curious, kind of stupid, and with much too much energy, not unlike the other Americans I saw in Montmartre that week, marching up

John von Sothen is an American columnist living in Paris, where he covers entertainment and society issues for French Vanity Fair. Von Sothen has written for both the American and French GQ, Slate, Technikart, Libération, and The New York Observer; he has written for TV at Canal+ and MTV; and he is now penning a column for the political site Mediapart. Von Sothen often does voice-overs in English for French perfumes and luxury brands, occasionally performs stand-up comedy at The New York Comedy Night in the SoGymnase Comedy Club in Paris (in French and English), and is a routine guest on the French radio station Europe 1 discussing all things US related.

Named one of the best travel books in the New York Times's "Summer Reading" list

John von Sothen s memoir of Parisian expat life . . . offers dozens of these inside-baseball insights into a place that continues to mystify and enchant. . . . von Sothen offers some delicious, uniquely French details.
The Washington Post

What do you need to know about the places you re going? A dozen new books answer this question in strikingly idiosyncratic ways, wreathing their authors wanderings in vivid back story sometimes emotional, sometimes empirical, sometimes imperial enveloping the reader in a kind of legible Sensurround. These books ought to come with 3-D glasses and a soundtrack. . . . The American writer John von Sothen crushed out on a more universally recognized source of allure, a beautiful Frenchwoman, whom he met in a bistro in Brooklyn at the turn of the millennium. Soon his love for that woman, Anaïs, launched him across the Atlantic to Paris, where he remains today. Monsieur Mediocre records his love affair with France and with Anaïs (whom he married), and his continuing, bumbling attempts to carry off la vie Parisienne with something approaching grace or, at least, skirting calamity.
The New York Times

"This book made me laugh out loud on the subway. J'adore every jaded character, every hilarious insight, and every upended stereotype. Most of all I felt this hum of love for France, for family, and for life, really that gives every essay a beguiling depth."
Maeve Higgins, author of Maeve in America

"Hilarious and touching! We hear often how cultured the French are, how sophisticated, how superior. Expat John von Sothen's Paris is, in his words, 'a mess a confusing, roiling, weird place.' In other words, it's a lot of fun not unlike this charming book."
Ada Calhoun, author of Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give

"I devoured John von Sothen's sharp, funny, and surprisingly tender memoir. A fresh